Farm Unit week 2 An orange in January

Unit Book: An Orange in January

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

How does food get from a farm to your house?
(plump, drenched, transport, journey, segment, gleamed)

Literacy Small Groups

Rhyming-We will practice our rhyming skills.  Using dot markers we will hunt for farm words that rhyme with the word the teacher says.

Lowercase Letters- We will be working on lowercase letters l and t this week. We will be using magnet boards, colored salt trays, chalk boards, or shaving cream to form these letters within our small group time. We will then expose the children to the Fundation lines. Fundations is the curriculum used in kindergarten. We will be exposing the students to the language (ie. sky line, plane line, grass line, and worm line) when forming our letters.

Bingo Name Game- Using farm vocabulary, we will listen to clues about words. For example, a teacher will say "a farmer stores the food for the animals in this building"....Students will then place a marker on the silo.

Journal Writing-  Once we have learned about an orange’s journey to our homes in the middle of winter, we will write about it in our journals. We will make our own list and write the steps an orange takes to get to our homes.  We will slowly turtle talk our words and write the sounds that we hear. We will illustrate our thoughts using many colors and details .

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-Handwriting Without Tears Program-Lowercase Letter Formation Books

Math Small Groups

Take Away Stories- We will use orange pom poms to practice subtraction story problems on an orange tree. We will “pick” the oranges from the tree to discover how many are left and will even try to solve how many oranges were picked.  Use this activity at home to help your child practice the skill of taking away.

Part/Part/Whole- We will look more at whole numbers and number parts.  Using pigs in a pen, we will take a whole number and use our pigs to make number parts.  For example, using the number 7 we can place our pigs into 2 parts: 5+2, 6+1, 3+4, etc.  Try this activity at home!

How many are left? We will continue to work on our subtraction skills by solving farm story problems.  We listen to a math story dictated by the teacher and use animals counters to solve how many are left.  We will then trace our answers on our recording sheet.

Orange Segmenting- We will segment a paper orange into 6 parts. We will show how parts of the orange can equal a whole. (ie. 2parts and 4 parts are 1 whole)

Centers

Art Table-Finishing our farm animal books

Block Area- farm animals

Sensory Table-Washing produce(sponges, plastic fruit, soapy water)
Book Area- Exploring Books about community
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table-Farm Lists
Dramatic Play-Asian Restaurant (Happy Chinese New Year)
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Letters in a room hunt using clipboards
Rug- legos

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-Planes, trains, and automobiles
-What Does It Do?
-Good for you food
-Track the Sun

Preschool Life Skills 

- We will be focusing on our curriculum of Preschool Life Skills during this time to help us transition into our new classroom.

1. When I call your name, stop what you are doing, look at me, and say ,"Yes".
2. When I give you an instruction, do it "right away"
(Ask your child what do you do when your teacher tells you to do something.  They should reply "I do it right away." You can reinforce this at home too.  "Put your legos away and do it "right away""
3. When I give you  instructions, do them "right away" (multi-step directions)
4. When something is too hard say "Help me please"
5. When you want something from a teacher or friend, say "Excuse Me" to get their attention
6. When you want something from a teacher or friend, say "Excuse Me" to get their attention and then use your asking words(ie. May I have a turn?)

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Our Good Morning Chant

-Farmer in the Dell
-Apples and Bananas Song
-Rhyming Identifying games
-Simon Says (Farmer Lisa Says.....)

Classroom Motivational System
We will be learning classroom routines and expectations within our new classroom.  In order to create a successful and rewarding environment, each child will have a motivational system. Our classroom system promotes positive classroom behavior through positive peer modeling and teachers providing positive reinforcement for desired behaviors.